Northeast Corridor Could Cause Problems for Connecticut
By Tara Fehr
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17-The firing last week of Amtrak President David Gunn may now lead to the splitting off from Amtrak its Northeast Corridor service, which runs trains between Boston and Washington.
In September the Amtrak board voted to take preliminary steps toward spinning off the corridor service, but Gunn did not agree with it and was fired
The Amtrak board favors cutting the Northeast Corridor service from Amtrak and turning corridor operations over to a private consortium.
“The Amtrak board of directors has become a front for the Bush Administration and people who want to destroy Amtrak,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said at a hearing Tuesday by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s railroads subcommittee on the governance of Amtrak. “When Mr. Gunn refused to go along with the ‘Bush Board’ on actions that would cripple the railroad, most notably the Northeast Corridor, he was fired.”
In a press release announcing Gunn’s dismissal, the board said the rail service needed to “intensify the pace and broaden the scope of its reform.”
“David Gunn has helped Amtrak receive much-needed financial and organizational stability,” David Laney, chairman of the board, said in his testimony at the hearing. “At the same time, the Amtrak board cannot keep looking at the rear-view mirror.”
So, where does this leave the Northeast Corridor?
Amtrak carried about 1.4 million Connecticut passengers in 2004, up from 1.2 million the previous year, according to the company’s fact sheet.
The Connecticut rail system is among the most congested tracks in the country, said Chris Cooper, Connecticut Department of Transportation spokesman. The New Haven line, with 110,00 riders per day, carries more passengers between Connecticut and New York City in a year than the rest of Amtrak does nationally. The Northeast Corridor track also runs through a part of the state with the oldest bridges and overhead electrical systems.
“Connecticut is one of the 13 colonies, so all of our infrastructure and transportation corridors are among some of the oldest [in the country],” Cooper said.
Track maintenance costs about $300,000 per mile annually when the track is in good condition, said Jim Cameron, vice president of the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council, a citizens group representing riders of the Metro-North and Shore Line East rail lines. Shore Line East commuter trains are operated by Amtrak. Cameron is also a member of the Coastal Corridor Transportation Investment Area, which was established by the Connecticut General Assembly in 2001.
Connecticut invests its own money in the state’s railroad system. The fleet replacement program, for example, introduced by the governor in the 2005 legislative session, will deliver new cars. The state also is building new stations and improving the rail infrastructure.
“Connecticut is on pace, between its fleet replacement plan, new stations and infrastructure upgrades, to have a first-class system within about three years,” Cooper said. But the state is concerned with the Amtrak board’s preliminary proposal, he said.
“The bottom line is Connecticut is making significant investments in rail,” he said. “We do not want to see a proposal that would represent a step backward from the progress we are making.”
But federal funding has been scarce, and actions taken by President Bush, who did not allocate money to Amtrak in his fiscal 2006 budget proposal, and the Amtrak board, when it fired Gunn and introduced the Northeast Corridor plan, have some lawmakers worried.
“The funding problem is a safety concern,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., noting that railroads are always underfunded.
The Senate and the House rejected the President’s proposal to deny funds to Amtrak, and now the system could receive $1.3 billion, according to the Transportation appropriations bill conference report, Nadler said
“Affordable, reliable, and safe rail service in the Northeast Corridor is vital to the lives of the people of Connecticut who depend on it for their daily transportation and livelihood,” said Rep. Robert Simmons, R-2 nd District.
Cooper said that the state recognizes the importance of its rail system and hopes that Amtrak also will see it.
“The best scenario for us would be that Amtrak recognize the importance of rail travel, particularly commuter rail travel in Connecticut, and not do anything to impede our progress from making sure we have a safe, reliable system that could handle the growing capacity that we see every month in terms of increased ridership,” he said.
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